THE WORLD

THE WORLD; Japan's Old Guard Flails At the Talking Heads

By DAVID E. SANGER

Published: November 7, 1993

TOKYO—
WHEN the revolution finally arrived in the Japanese political world last summer, the country's commercial television networks led the charge, and clearly enjoyed their newly discovered power to stir the electorate. Now the losers are out for revenge, trying to put the genie back in the television tube.

For years the networks had been chipping away at Japan's supposed equivalent of the BBC, the state-dominated NHK television network, by nurturing some superstar newscasters, like Hiroshi Kume, who reported each scandal to hit the Liberal Democratic Party with sarcastic commentary and disbelieving stares. The public loved it.

For years political reporting in Japan had been about as exciting as reciting the Tokyo telephone directory, a series of disjointed images of elderly politicians mumbling into their neckties about issues that were never really explained. But since the Liberal Democrats faced no credible opposition, it hardly mattered.

So when a telegenic, capable new generation of politicians defected from the party and began talking about the obvious -- why Japanese consumers suffered high prices, long commutes and levels of corruption that only the Italians could rival -- Mr. Kume and his competitors tossed aside most pretenses of even-handedness. The Liberal Democrats were battered nightly. "Hard to believe they run the country this way, isn't it?" Mr. Kume would muse, holding up charts tracing the Byzantine path that $20 or $30 million had taken from the secret accounts of a construction company to the pocket of some senior politician.

"This was the most important election in Japan since World War II," said Taro Kimura, a longtime newscaster on the NHK network who now works independently. "And suddenly everyone discovered that television, which was rarely central to previous elections, was something they had to worry about."

In the last few weeks, though, the out-of-power but still-powerful Liberal Democrats have led a battle to put Japan's media conglomerates back in the cage they lived in for so long. And faced with evidence that they tilted the scales too far, the media are in retreat, bowing, apologizing and resigning.

The Liberal Democrats' opportunity to strike back was handed to them by Sadayoshi Tsubaki, the chief of news at TV Asahi, Mr. Kume's network. At a broadcasting convention, Mr. Tsubaki was indiscreet enough to boast that he and his colleagues "covered the election with a determination that we, through all the news programs and election reporting, must break" the party's 38-year hold on power. The network "was never impartial" in its coverage, he said with no regrets.

The political fury that followed compressed into a few weeks the arguments that Americans have made for decades about the mixed blessings of television. The arguments quickly took a nasty turn. The Liberal Democrats subpoenaed Mr. Tsubaki and his colleagues to appear in front of parliament. When the Post and Telecommunications ministry renewed the network's license last week, it slapped on conditions that it repent for its partisan ways.

Not surprisingly, the hearings raised protests about a not-so-subtle campaign by the Government to bring the media back under its control. The Mainichi Shimbun, a major daily, called the hearings "offensive and repulsive." Newscasters around the country joined the protests.

Others, including the guardians of the imperial family, sensed a chance to take the media barons down a notch or two. The palace has blamed the cheeky weekly magazines here for driving Empress Michiko to what has been described as a severe psychological trauma, leaving her unable to speak since she collapsed two and a half weeks ago. The offending articles said she was demanding and unreasonable, though the evidence was sparse. The difference between Japan and England became apparent when a prominent magazine that ran the stories apologized profusely.

For decades, television, particularly the NHK, exercised enormous influence in Japan simply by failing to challenge the powers that be. Even the commercial networks, scared of exclusion from the press clubs that give them access to Japan's powerful, never shook things up until the tide of public opinion made it a safe bet. The NHK never even made it that far: its board is selected by the prime minister, and the television fee it collects from each household is set by parliament. Some staff members at the NHK complex in Tokyo used to refer to the evening news as "The L.D.P. Hour." What Corruption?

While the network has produced some remarkable documentaries on topics like Japan's industrial rise, you could watch for years without learning much about how bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians traded cash for favors.

"The biggest task for any president of NHK was to resist pressure from the L.D.P.," Mr. Kimura said. "The pressure was overwhelming."

Now the biggest influence may be coming from overseas. Reluctantly, the Government is opening the airwaves to more foreign broadcasts, though the language barrier remains enormous. Imitation, however, is rife. Sunday morning political talk shows are already an institution -- bagels must be next.

But the opinionated newscasters like Mr. Kume, an interviewer who refuses to be interviewed, have plenty of detractors. "The influence of these newscasters has grown way out of proportion to their knowledge or intelligence," said Yoshimi Ishikawa, a writer and media critic. "They can't carry on a policy discussion for more than a minute."

If the architects of the new Government achieve their dream, there will be two or three conservatively oriented parties in Japan that can debate issues. But debate is a new form on television, and it leaves many uncomfortable.

Does the storied Japanese executive, stumbling in at midnight after a night of drinking with his office mates, really want to flip on a raging argument over the future of industrial policy? Probably not, but he might be interested in why the Empress can't speak.